Instagram’s Newest Feature Drop: Map, Reposts & Friends Tab

On August 6, the platform launched reposts for public Reels and feed posts, a new interactive map with optional location sharing, and a “Friends” tab in Reels that lets you peek at what your close connections are watching, liking, and commenting on. 

All three features are being gradually rolled out, starting in the U.S, with global availability to follow. 

Each feature is designed to help people stay in touch in subtle but meaningful ways, but is Instagram really enhancing the experience, or just reshuffling features we’ve seen elsewhere?

The reposts feature lets users reshare public Reels and feed posts. To repost, tap the repost icon under eligible content, add a short note in a pop-up thought bubble, and press save. 

The repost appears in your followers’ feeds, and a new dedicated tab is on your profile. 

If you’re a creator, this can help your content reach new audiences. However, it’s important to note that reposts only work for public content. 

If your account is private, even if a friend reposts your Reel, it will not be recommended to their followers who don’t already follow you.

Reposting isn’t new to internet culture. Twitter (now X) popularized it with the retweet function. TikTok also has a repost tab on each user's profile, which is eerily similar to the one Instagram is now updating.

Instagram also launched Instagram Map, a location-sharing feature that brings social content into geographic context. 

You can opt in to share your last active location with selected friends, such as mutual followers, close friends, or custom groups. Your location only updates when you open or return to the app. 

Parents of supervised teen accounts will receive notifications if their child turns this on, and they can view who the teen is sharing their location with. The feature gives users granular control: you can exclude specific people or places and turn off sharing at any time.

Even if you choose not to share your location, you can still use the map to browse content posted from tagged locations. This includes Reels, posts, stories, and even short Notes left by others. 

In that sense, Instagram Map is Instagram’s most apparent attempt yet to rival Snapchat’s Snap Map, which continues to be one of that app’s most-used features.

Finally, the new Friends tab in Reels pulls together content your mutuals have liked, commented on, reposted, or created. 

This isn’t exactly a new idea. Instagram once had a “Following” activity feed that showed similar data, but it was removed in 2019 due to low usage and privacy concerns. 

The Friends tab is a reimagined version of that concept, now focused specifically on Reels and social discovery.

Like TikTok, which splits the user feed into “For You” and “Following” tabs, Instagram’s Friends tab sits inside the Reels section and highlights engagement data from people you follow. 

One key difference is that you may see comments, not just likes or reposts. The tab had a soft launch earlier in the year, when some users saw a floating carousel of friends’ icons at the top of their Reels page.

Now, it’s available more broadly and comes with controls to hide your activity or mute the activity of others.

These features may improve connectivity, but they also prompt larger questions. Instagram has been accused of chasing trends rather than setting them. 

With Stories taken from Snapchat, Reels from TikTok, and now Maps and Friends tabs echoing both, some users feel the platform is becoming a collage of others’ ideas.

At the same time, these changes aim to make the app more social again. Instagram have struggled with their identity in recent years, caught between being a photo-first platform, a creator space, and a messaging tool. 

Whether these updates help clarify that identity or further muddy the waters remains to be seen.

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